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First, "free market competition" is NOT a cure-all for everything. The "Free Market" does do a far better job of rapidly and semi-accurately allocating resourc

by toss1 4y ago

First, "free market competition" is NOT a cure-all for everything. The "Free Market" does do a far better job of rapidly and semi-accurately allocating resources and labor than central planning. However, the "Free Market" is absolutely horrible at solving other problems, starting with the Commons Problem, and including the tendency towards monopolies, which are the problem here. It is a near-mathematical certainty in a 'free market' that the big get bigger, and weild that power to crush any upstarts. Even if there is massive demand for something new, the entrenched monopoly/near-monopoly/cartel players will crush it. This is the case here. Also, in regulated markets (i.e., all of them, see next paragraph), the large players will often succeed at regulatory capture, which further enables them. Also note that the "free market" is an absolute fiction. It does not exist. Every market has rules, spoken or tacit. The only question is what are the rules and how are they enforced. Wise governments will set rules that minimize the tendency towards monopoly, and protect their institutions and citizens from regulatory capture. This is a step in that direction. Another tack to answer your question is to observe what actually happens in these "free" markets. There has been enormous demand for this, with pressure provoking legislatures to attempt to act for decades, yet no competitor has arisen. Similarly, it took literally most of a century, and major legislation to get car companies to even start installing safety gear like collapsible steering columns (replacing the ones that impaled the drivers in small collisions), seat belts, airbags, etc. Plenty of demand, but a cartel-ish industry fails to meet it. Re-examine your libertarian tendencies more closely. I also used to find it an attractive concept, but it is full of glib answers that are not actually realizable in the real world (and often not even in toy models). Actually working through the consequences of many of the concepts shows that they are just a mirage, and sticking to those ideas simply enables monopolists and oligarchs to thrive.

edmundsauto 4y ago
> The "Free Market" does do a far better job of rapidly and semi-accurately allocating resources and labor than central planning. I'm really curious if the IoT and AI age we're entering changes this. It doesn't seem like an immutable law of the universe - my guess is that people's self-interest and the challenges of scaling communication are the root cause. Objective analytics and AI systems to synthesize information might change the efficacy of central planning; also, the current free market implementation appears that it's being twisted as externalities become of larger focus (ie climate change)
dktoao 4y ago
Bravo, I wish I had read this when I was a young "free market" idealist.
Etrnl_President 4y ago
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larkost 4y ago
This is a really good statement, but I think you are missing some nuance on one statement: The "Free Market" does do a far better job of rapidly and semi-accurately allocating resources and labor than central planning. In theory a central decider works better, and nearly every company I have ever heard of has some form of central planning as their overall governing strategy. But trying to central plan a whole economy; that takes too much information, and is too venerable to corruption. And it also requires the central planner to really understand what is "best", and consistently choosing the "right" central planners seems to require political structures we just don't have. So even in the absence of "true" corruption the decision making processes get "corrupted". Looking at history it looks like some sort of market economy with legislators making rules to keep the market from doing bad things (e.g.: externalizing things like global warming, or killing people in meat processing plants) is the best solution that humanity has yet invented.

by toss1 4y ago

edmundsauto 4y ago

> The "Free Market" does do a far better job of rapidly and semi-accurately allocating resources and labor than central planning. I'm really curious if the IoT and AI age we're entering changes this. It doesn't seem like an immutable law of the universe - my guess is that people's self-interest and the challenges of scaling communication are the root cause. Objective analytics and AI systems to synthesize information might change the efficacy of central planning; also, the current free market implementation appears that it's being twisted as externalities become of larger focus (ie climate change)

dktoao 4y ago

Bravo, I wish I had read this when I was a young "free market" idealist.

Etrnl_President 4y ago

[dead]

larkost 4y ago

This is a really good statement, but I think you are missing some nuance on one statement: The "Free Market" does do a far better job of rapidly and semi-accurately allocating resources and labor than central planning. In theory a central decider works better, and nearly every company I have ever heard of has some form of central planning as their overall governing strategy. But trying to central plan a whole economy; that takes too much information, and is too venerable to corruption. And it also requires the central planner to really understand what is "best", and consistently choosing the "right" central planners seems to require political structures we just don't have. So even in the absence of "true" corruption the decision making processes get "corrupted". Looking at history it looks like some sort of market economy with legislators making rules to keep the market from doing bad things (e.g.: externalizing things like global warming, or killing people in meat processing plants) is the best solution that humanity has yet invented.